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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Breaking habits',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/09/23.jpg" alt="A large crowd gathered at the sports field" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The wording of the discussion assignment makes it sound like we&apos;re supposed to recount a time when we had a bad habit, then we later noticed that for some reason, we no longer had said habit.
			I can&apos;t think of a single time in my life that I&apos;ve had a bad habit that just changed.
			When I have a bat habit, I keep it until I actively work to break it.
			Perhaps I&apos;m odd in that regard, but I really don&apos;t think so.
			I think for most people, breaking bad habits is something we have to work at.
			Maybe other people have better influences in their lives than I do though.
			Maybe these influences help them shape their behaviours for the better without them noticing right away.
		</p>
		<p>
			I won&apos;t go over the worst habits I&apos;ve managed to break over the years, as they&apos;re things most people do without even realising how damaging these behaviours are.
			Going over them would make me look judgemental, when honestly, I just hold myself to a higher standard than I hold other people.
			You do you, and I&apos;ll try to be the best me I can be.
		</p>
		<p>
			One bad habit the textbook keeps coming back to though is poor diet.
			It&apos;s not exactly the worst habit to have, but it&apos;s one I even now struggle with.
			Shortly after the end of last term though, I started trying to fix my diet.
			I don&apos;t have it in me to do major meal planning and nutritional intake monitoring, especially when school is in session.
			But I&apos;ve entirely cut several poor-quality foods out of my diet, and I&apos;ve added certain foods I wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve before normally eaten.
			In particular, I&apos;ve upped my protein intake, vitamin C intake, fibre intake, and whole grain intake.
			Again, I don&apos;t watch my exact levels of intake of anything, as I don&apos;t have the time and energy to, but I&apos;m eating better than I had been eating last term and prior.
			For the first time since I first gave up milk, I&apos;ve kept with it enough to see noticeable improvement in my body.
			I still have a ways to go, but I&apos;m on the right track.
		</p>
		<p>
			One of the major issues I&apos;ve dealt with in past dieting attempts was described by the textbook this week.
			Namely, a lapse is easy, and lapses quickly lead to relapses if the attempting dieter accepts responsibility for their own actions instead of seeking a scapegoat (Ogden, 2017).
			Personally, I could never actually blame an outside force for my own failures when I know for a fact that the blame rests squarely on me.
			As such, as effective as the scapegoat method may be for the general public, it&apos;s not a tool I can effectively apply on myself.
			When I have lapsed in the past, it has indeed quickly led to a relapse.
			I do blame myself, because it&apos;s completely my fault.
			I&apos;m stronger though now than I&apos;ve been in the past, and I live in a less judgemental and less toxic environment.
			I feel that this time, I can succeed.
			I endeavour this time not to lapse in the first place.
			I know that if I lapse, I&apos;ll fail.
			I know that there&apos;s no room for failure.
			And after staring longingly at certain fatty foods in the grocery store, such as potato chips or tater tots, that&apos;s the conclusion I always come back to: I can&apos;t allow myself to lapse, even once, until I&apos;ve fixed my ugly body shape.
			Once I&apos;m thinner, I can eat fatty foods in very limited quantities, but for now, that&apos;s not an option.
			For now, I need to keep my eyes on the prize.
		</p>
		<p>
			Our other reading assignment for the week suggested that monetary rewards are a good way to affect the success rate of behavioural change tactics (Giles, Robalino, McColl, Sniehotta, &amp; Adams, 2014).
			I&apos;ve never actually had someone bribe me to do the right thing though.
			As I said, I have to fix my bad habits on my own.
			And you can&apos;t bribe yourself with money.
			You can bribe yourself with other items, but money is different in that it&apos;s an abstraction of something you actually would want: value.
			You can&apos;t bribe yourself with value, as you have to give up the value you offer in a bribe, but since you&apos;re the one being bribed, you get back that same value.
			If you succeed, you pay yourself, so you gain exactly as much money as you lose.
			If you fail, you don&apos;t pay up, but you don&apos;t have to pay up.
			You&apos;re exactly in the same position either way.
			Compare this to bribing yourself with, say, as new hair brush.
			(I actually did bribe myself with a hair brush one time.)
			If you succeed, you buy yourself the item.
			If you fail, you keep your money, but you refuse to buy yourself the item you actually wanted.
			This means you have an actual incentive to avoid lapse and relapse.
		</p>
		<p>
			Have you ever actually changed a bad habit without noticing right away, only to notice later, as the question for the week seems to imply?
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Giles, E. L., Robalino, S., McColl, E., Sniehotta, F. F., &amp; Adams, J. (2014). The effectiveness of financial incentives for health behaviour change: Systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 9(3): e90347. Retrieved from <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090347"><code>http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090347</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				Ogden, J. (2017). The Psychology of Health and Illness: An Open Access Course. Retrieved from <a href="https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf"><code>https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
